Brigitte
by Qoheleth
Summary: In the jungles of Jumanji, there are Guardians: young, ordinary mortals plucked out of history to tend the terrors of the game. One of them is a thirteenth-century merchant's daughter named Brigitte. This is her story.
1. A Cry in the Night

Disclaimer: _Jumanji_ belongs to Chris Van Allsburg, Columbia/Tri-Star Pictures, and several other people who escape my memory. I am none of them.

* * *

It was a dark and stormy night. 

Nights in Jumanji were always dark, of course, but they were rarely stormy, and when Brigitte had felt the first drop of rain on her cheek, she had thought for one wild moment that she was back Above, or else that she was dead. Her next thought was that Lucia Vergilia was dead, and that the storms over which she was Guardian had been left to rage unchecked, and perhaps they would all be drowned.

Then she caught sight of Lucia Vergilia herself, standing on a nearby outcrop of rock and directing the storm with her hands, and knew that nothing so grave had occurred. The Roman maiden had simply decided, for whatever reason, that tonight would be monsoon season in the jungles of Jumanji. Satisfied, Brigitte lay back down on her bed of moss.

A few minutes later, one of her bats, already bedraggled with the rain, flew down and alighted on a branch just above her head. Brigitte smiled up at it, thankful, as she had been many times before, that she had been appointed Guardian over such a gentle Terror.

_"What news, François?"_ she whispered in the Jumanjic tongue.

The bat did not respond in words – the link between Guardian and Terror is not so strong as that – but Brigitte sensed in it the same great unease that she had been sensing in all her bats for several days. _Danger,_ it seemed to say. _Great change. Upheaval._

The bats would know, of course. They were part of Jumanji in a way that she was not, and they were far-ranging – when night fell, as Brigitte well knew, they flew through every inch of the jungle. How often had she flown with them, closing her eyes and entwining her being with theirs – the one time she felt really at home in this jungle of dark magic.

She sighed… and as she sighed, suddenly out of the jungles came a horrible scream.

It was not like the screams that one heard when Hadassah's phantoms were feeding. Those were cries only of the momentary agony before death. This was a cry of great loss, of painful loneliness, of sudden and almost unimaginable tragedy. It was the cry of someone waking up in the middle of the night to find her best friend's body lying beside her, half torn apart by wolves.

Brigitte knew what it was, of course. She had heard it many times before.

She strained to make out the sound, to discern what sort of animal it was, but the sound of ultimate suffering is always very much the same, no matter what throat makes it. It appeared to be a solitary animal, rather than a cacophony of voices, but that was all she could determine – and then it stopped, abruptly, as though someone had cut it off.

Brigitte glanced again at the outcrop of rock. Lucia Vergilia was still standing there, frozen in place, staring wide-eyed into the heart of the jungle. Not her, then.

Brigitte glanced up at the bat, which was still dangling nonchalantly from the branch above her. _"Who was it, little one?"_ she said. _"Do you know?"_

The bat cocked its head to one side, and almost seemed to say that it knew perfectly well – but the next minute it let out a little squeak of alarm, released its grip on the branch, and flew frantically toward Lucia Vergilia's outcrop of rock.

Brigitte turned her head in the other direction, toward the heart of the jungle, and saw what had frightened the bat away – and felt suddenly frightened herself.

A green mist had risen in the jungle, and was making its way lazily but definitely toward her, attenuating as it did so into the vague, wispy shape of an enormous serpent. It had no mouth, no nostrils, no features of any kind save two red, glowing eyes in which no pupils could be seen.

_"Good evening, Brigitte,"_ it whispered in the Jumanjic tongue.

Brigitte shivered, but her voice did not falter as she replied, "Good evening, Master Jumanji."

_"You must come to the clearing,"_ said the spirit of the jungle. _"There has been a loss tonight. Another game must be played. You must come."_

No further words were needed. The spirit passed over Brigitte's bed and drifted toward Lucia Vergilia.

Brigitte rose unsteadily from her bed of moss, her legs shaking violently. She whispered a Summons into the air, and after a few moments the bat that had flown from Master Jumanji's presence returned and alighted on her arm. Brigitte stroked its fur to calm herself, and headed for the clearing.


	2. A Gathering of Guardians

Brigitte was not the first Guardian to arrive at the clearing, and she was glad of it. The clearing was an eerie place even by Jumanjic standards, a place where demons and sorcerers planned the abduction of children, and to be alone in it was never a pleasant thing.

One of the two Guardians in the clearing lifted up his head when he heard Brigitte approaching, and Brigitte saw that it was Sowagen, the young Abnaki brave who Guarded the rats. His was a simple mind; the way he saw it, he had accepted Jumanji's offer of Guardianship out of his own weakness and folly, and now there was nothing he could do but discharge his duties honorably and hope that the Great Spirit would look kindly on him. Brigitte had often wished that her own soul would allow her such simplicity.

"Ah, Brigitte," said Sowagen, raising a hand in greeting. "Well met."

Brigitte nodded, and glanced at his companion. Patience was the newest Guardian (she would not complete her first century in Jumanji for a few months yet), which meant that she had never, until tonight, heard the heart-wrenching cry that meant that a Guardian had been lost.

She had heard it now, and it had clearly driven her to distraction. She was wringing her hair (still wet from Lucia Vergilia's storm) so tightly that it might have been her life-line; her mosquitoes were flying about her head in a fine frenzy; and her eyes showed the fear of an antelope that believes itself surrounded by lions.

Brigitte said nothing to her. Tomorrow, or the next day, Patience would be calm again, and until that time she would want to be alone. (How well Brigitte remembered the first time she heard the cry. For two days and a night she had gone about the jungle in a state of shock, collapsing finally in a fit of helpless tears.)

She did not want to speak to Sowagen, either, for he was a handsome brave, and she was a shy girl, and three and a half centuries of shared servitude had done nothing to change either fact. When no one spoke, however, the sounds of the jungle could be heard more clearly – and for Brigitte, who heard with the ears of bats, that did not mean merely the whistling of the wind and the muttering of beasts, but also the keening of the ancient spells themselves, as they wound themselves through the sinister jungle.

_Which is worse, Brigitte?_ she asked herself. _To expose oneself to another human, or to be alone with demons?_

"Do you know who it was?" she asked aloud.

Sowagen turned to her and laughed ruefully. "Not me," he said.

Brigitte smiled slightly and shook her head. "A single throat," she mused, "and not Lucia Vergilia's crocodile. That only leaves three."

"I would be sorry if it were Claire," said Sowagen. "There is a good cheer about her that is much needed in this place."

Brigitte sighed. "I fear it may be her," she said. "The good go more quickly than the wretched."

Sowagen glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "Not always," he said. "You have been here nearly a hundred hundred moons, and you are as good as any of us."

Brigitte smiled. It was nice of him to say.

There was a sudden rustling of the leaves, and Lucia Vergilia came into the clearing. Brigitte, catching her eye, was startled to find the semblance of fear; though why Lucia Vergilia, one of the oldest Guardians in the jungle, should particularly fear the death-cry, Brigitte could not say.

She was not given long to brood over it, in any case, for no sooner had Lucia Vergilia seated herself than Fatima arrived at the gathering place. She was a Spanish Moor roughly coeval with Brigitte, and had been one of the few Guardians to genuinely welcome her when she was taken – a fact that had taken the young Catholic girl rather by surprise, but Fatima had dismissed their differences by saying, "The servants of any sort of God must needs be allies in this place of the Shaitan." In that phrase, Fatima was writ plain: she was always painfully aware that one required allies on one's journey, and unless she knew a man to be wicked at heart, she dared not refuse his aid. It was, Brigitte had to admit, not a bad way to live one's life.

Fatima glanced around the clearing. "By the Prophet, how dark it is!" she said, and laughed. "Shall we have no light to build our schemes by?" She clapped her hands, and the fires of which she was Guardian roared up at the center of the clearing, casting light and warmth on all assembled. Fatima nodded, satisfied, and sat down beside Lucia Vergilia.

It was some five minutes before the next Guardians arrived; two at once this time, Elizabeth of the plague and Ibrahim of the monkeys. The amount of time these two spent together had led some to believe that they were sweet on each other, but Brigitte did not believe this; Ibrahim did not have the constancy to be sweet on anyone for more than half a century, and Elizabeth (the soberest, least emotional Guardian in the jungle) could not possibly be unaware of the fact.

Fatima gave a mock bow. "A good evening to you, Plague Maiden," she said. "Have you and your paramour then come to console us in our loss?"

Elizabeth said nothing, and her face remained as it always was, as cold and expressionless as Jumanji's crystal sky. She and Ibrahim seated themselves on the ground of the clearing, and Ibrahim picked up a nearby stick and began poking at Fatima's fire.

Sowagen leaned toward Brigitte. "I hope the Masters release the plague during this next game," he said.

"Why?" said Brigitte, surprised.

"Have you not seen?" said Sowagen. "Elizabeth's spirit is poisoned by this place. It is because of the foulness of her Guardianship, I think. She must taste the upper air again if she is to be healed."

"Perhaps so," Brigitte admitted. "But I don't think the Masters will release her, all the same. I have witnessed seven games, and I have never seen the plague released. I sometimes think the Masters fear its power."

"As well they might," Sowagen murmured. His hand moved to the scar on his cheek where the smallpox had marked him, and he said no more.

His words, however, had planted reflections in Brigitte's mind. She had known three plague Guardians in her time: Adeodatus, Jacques, and now Elizabeth. (That in itself was suggestive, for no other Guardianship had changed hands more than once since she had entered the jungle.) Adeodatus had been a cold, spiteful creature for all of the short time she had known him, and, according to the older Guardians, had always been so. Jacques had been a fairly cheerful, happy-go-lucky fellow when he had first entered the game, but his spirit had quickly deteriorated; Brigitte had thought it was because his Gypsy soul could not bear captivity, but now she wondered. And as for Elizabeth – well, she had always been reserved, but there had been a time when one could speak to her cordially and without rancor, and she had even smiled occasionally. Now, there was none of that.

Was the Guardian of the plague really more vulnerable to the jungle's evils than were the other Guardians? Brigitte wasn't sure – but when François squeaked a moment later, and she reached down to stroke his head, she found herself peculiarly grateful that he and his nest-mates were her charge.

When she looked up again, she discovered that several more Guardians had entered the clearing while she had been in her reverie. Miriamne, the Guardian of the earthquake, was reclining on the ground beside Ibrahim and Elizabeth; Khalika, of the spiders, was seated on the other side of Lucia Vergilia from Fatima; and Alexandros, of the quicksand, was sitting on a nearby tree stump, muttering to himself.

Brigitte, upon seeing Alexandros, felt the sudden upsurge of anger that the thought of him always brought her. She could forgive Jumanji for enslaving the rest of them; it was only doing what it had to to survive, after all, and it couldn't be blamed if they had been fools enough to accept its offer. But to sentence an idiot to nigh-eternal bondage, simply because he didn't understand enough to turn it down – what blackness of soul could conceive of such a thing?

Then a nearby branch rustled and Hadassah entered the clearing, and Brigitte's fury gave way to a different emotion. Hadassah was not the Guardian Brigitte most feared (that was Gretl Van Pelt, of the stampede), but she could never look on her without a shudder.

Hadassah was unique among the Guardians. All the others Jumanji had sought out in its time of need; playing upon their weaknesses, it had convinced them to surrender their freedom and serve it in its heart of darkness. It had not done this with Hadassah; rather, she had dug it up from where the previous players had buried it, summoned the spirit of the game to appear before her, and voluntarily offered it her service if it would take her out of the world in which she lived. (Only she and the Masters knew why she so desired this, and no one else had ever dared to ask.)

Jumanji had accepted, and, since there was no Guardianship then available, had fashioned a new Terror for her to guard. None of the other Guardians had ever seen this Terror (perhaps even Hadassah herself had not), but all of them had heard it: a whispering in the night, a rustling of what might have been wings, and then the scream of some poor creature as Hadassah's charges descended upon their prey.

Jumanji called Hadassah the Guardian of the Phantoms, and it was an accurate enough designation. Most of the Guardians, however, thought it failed to convey the full reality of her creatures; had it not led to too much confusion, they would have called her the Guardian of the Terrors.

* * *

Hadassah did not sit down. Instead, she walked over to a tree that stood behind Alexandros's stump, leaned herself against it, and watched the other Guardians, unblinkingly, from a distance. She had no illusions about how much intimacy with her the other Guardians desired.

The next Guardian to arrive, however, was not nearly so distant. Claire was physically the youngest of the Guardians, having been not quite nine years old when she was taken into the jungle, and somehow this had granted her not only a kinship with her leopard unmatched in intensity by any of the other bonds of Guardian and Terror, but also a seeming immunity to the darkness of Jumanji. After four and a half centuries in the accursed jungle, her spirit remained as bright and cheerful as on the day of her capture.

As she entered the clearing and sat down beside Ibrahim, a kind of relief seemed to settle on the assembled Guardians. They had all realized that the death-cry had come from a single animal, and, though only Sowagen had spoken it aloud, they had all feared that it might be Claire who had been taken from them. At the discovery that it had not, every face, even Elizabeth's, seemed to lighten – every face, that is, save that of Lucia Vergilia. Brigitte, sitting across from the storm Guardian, happened to catch sight of her face, and discovered, to her surprise, that the look of trepidation in her eyes had only increased with Claire's arrival.

Before she could satisfactorily explain this to herself, the bushes rustled yet again, and Samson entered the clearing, the alpha female of his hyena pack trotting behind him. His face was grim. Samson's face was always grim, of course, but in this case the others could scarcely blame him.

"I heard the Masters behind me as I was coming up the trail," he said, sitting down beside Brigitte. "They will be here shortly."

"With Gretl accompanying them, I suppose," said Ibrahim.

"Naturally," said Samson. He and Brigitte both crossed themselves (he in the Eastern fashion, she in the Western), Fatima and Ibrahim murmured the _shahādah_, and various other gestures of protection went up around the circle.

"Wait a minute," said Miriamne, frowning and counting the assembled Guardians. "There are sixteen Guardians counting Gretl, but there are only thirteen of us here. There couldn't have been two vanishings in one night, could there?"

"No," said Samson. "Probably one more member of our merry band is still on his way here."

Lucia Vergilia squirmed uneasily. "Which one, though?" she whispered, just loudly enough for Brigitte to hear.

Brigitte frowned and considered. If one excluded Gretl, there were two Guardians left, both of whose Terrors consisted of single beasts. There was no real way of saying which one had vanished – although it seemed unlikely that Will would have given up the ghost after a mere four centuries, so most probably it was…

Brigitte's eyes widened. She knew, suddenly, what it was that so frightened Lucia Vergilia – but before she could move to comfort her, the bushes rustled for the tenth and last time, and a dark and sinister company emerged.

First came the green, serpentine mist that housed the soul of Jumanji. It drifted over to the center of the clearing and settled upon Fatima's fire, turning its cheery glow into a pale and ghastly flickering. Brigitte shivered.

Close behind followed the hunter Adrian Van Pelt, walking astride a rhinoceros that carried his daughter Gretl on its back. Van Pelt was the sorcerer who had first carved the game, back in the distant past; at one time, he had worn the form of an African witch doctor and called himself Masumu, but when Patience had entered the jungle and told the Masters of the world as it was in her day, the sorcerer had concluded that the European in Africa was a more terrible creature than the Negro could ever be, and had changed himself and his daughter into Dutchmen, the better to strike fear into the heart. In this he was even more successful than he had intended, for, even as he acquired the white man's visage (as well as his ability to throw death, in the rifle he always carried), both he and Gretl retained something of the savage – in their eyes, perhaps, or perhaps in the way they walked – and the admixture was as eerie as anything in the jungle.

And behind them, walking with measured steps as though cautious of getting too close to the infernal retinue, came the final Jumanjic Guardian. There was no mistaking him: his serpent glided at his heels, and on his face was the mischievous half-smile the company knew so well – it was clearly Will, London pickpocket and all-around rogue.

There could no longer be any question of which Guardian had vanished – and, as if to make the point still more clear, Van Pelt stepped out from behind his daughter's rhinoceros and revealed the lion walking mournfully at his side. He had taken its Guardianship onto himself – a clear sign that its rightful Guardian was no more.

Lucia Vergilia let out a piercing wail. "Gaius!" she screamed. "No… no… _no!_" She rushed forward, clasped the lion by its neck, and began sobbing violently into its mane.

As she did so, a bolt of thunder sounded overhead, and it began to rain in the clearing – not a mild rain such as had woken Brigitte, but a violent, torrential downpour, as though Lucia Vergilia had ceased to care about her duties as Guardian and was letting the Jumanjic storm run its full, fatal course. For the second time that night, Brigitte thought that she would drown – except that now it was not a passing fancy, but an entirely reasonable belief.

"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God," she whispered, "have mercy on me."


	3. A Moment of Impulse

With unearthly speed, the spirit of Jumanji unraveled itself from the fire, flowed across the clearing, and wrapped the weeping Lucia Vergilia in its vapors.

"_Guardian of the Storms,"_ it hissed, its voice intense and unambiguous, "_you will control yourself."_

When Jumanji spoke thus, one obeyed. Lucia Vergilia took a series of deep, tremulous breaths, and her form, silhouetted in the mist, slowly regained its natural, self-contained bearing. As it did so, the torrents of rain abated, and the clouds from which they were spilled evaporated until the sickly-green sky of Jumanji could once again be plainly seen.

Satisfied, Jumanji departed from the Storm Guardian and settled once again on the fire, and Lucia Vergilia rose and turned to her fellow Guardians.

"I wish to apologize," she said distinctly, "for temporarily forsaking my duties as Guardian, and allowing the power of my Terror to imperil this jungle and the dwellers therein."

Fatima shrugged. "It was understandable," she said. "You lost a great deal today."

The Roman maiden nodded. "Gaius was the only other person who remembered the Empire," she said. "It is not… not pleasant to be the last of your tribe."

Samson shifted. "You are not the last of your tribe, Lucia Vergilia," he said. "There are at least three others who still remember Rome."

Lucia Vergilia turned to him and sighed. "Samson, Samson," she said, "do you and Miriamne even now persist in thinking of your castrated empire as Rome in truth?"

"Castrated empire?" Miriamne demanded. "Was it a castrated empire that restored the True Cross to Jerusalem? Was it a castrated empire that prevented the Mohammedans from invading Christendom?"

"For a time, at least," said Ibrahim mildly.

Miriamne turned to deliver him a blistering reply, but the cold voice of Van Pelt cut her off. "Guardians," he said, "you were not called here to debate medieval geopolitics. A Guardian has been lost, and must be replaced. What must be discussed now is who will fetch the replacement."

Brigitte could not have said what power overtook her then. Perhaps it was the memory of Sowagen's comments about the corrupting nature of Jumanji; perhaps it was the natural longing of the human animal for sunlight and a blue sky; perhaps it was the simple hand of Providence. In any case, the next moment she was on her feet.

"I will fetch him," she said.

* * *

Alexandros was the only Guardian who made no gesture of surprise. Even Hadassah cast a sharp look in Brigitte's direction; and Sowagen and Khalika, who had both fetched replacement Guardians themselves, stared at her as a survivor of a famine stares at a person who voluntarily fasts on Good Friday. 

Van Pelt himself seemed mildly taken aback. "This is unprecedented, Guardian of the Bats," he said.

Brigitte made no reply.

"Yes, unprecedented," Van Pelt repeated. "A Guardian who takes it upon herself to capture another Guardian? Unheard of."

"_True," _said the spirit of Jumanji coolly, "_but it may be a useful precedent."_

Sowagen rose. "With respect, Masters," he said, "I must ask pardon for Brigitte. She spoke in innocence, not knowing what she was offering to undertake."

Jumanji turned to him. "_Indeed?"_ it said. "_She knows what it means to be a Guardian. She was herself fetched by your predecessor – some time ago, it is true, but the event is presumably still fresh in her memory. In what way, then, does she not know what it means to fetch a Guardian?"_

Sowagen hesitated. "She… she has never done it before," he said. "She…"

"_And if she does not do it now, then you will say she still does not know what it means,"_ said Jumanji. "_And therefore she will not fetch the next Guardian, and therefore she will not learn what it means, and so it shall go until one night when we gather here to plan her own replacement. No, Guardian of the Rats, it is not so easy as that."_

Sowagen, who was far from being a rhetorician, looked somewhat confused by this, but he valiantly made another effort. "But why is it important that Brigitte learns?"

"_Why is it important that she does not?"_ replied Jumanji.

Sowagen seemed about to reply when a peculiar expression came into his face, as of one who has just been about to reveal too much. He turned his head and stared at Brigitte for a number of seconds, then shook his head and turned back to Jumanji. "I suppose there is no reason, Master."

"_Good,"_ said Jumanji.

Then Khalika rose, his face hard. "If I may, Masters?" he said. "As my comrade points out, Brigitte has never fetched a Guardian before, nor does she have the sort of nature that would make the seeking of one a simple thing for her. I therefore question whether she can find a suitable candidate in the space of a single game."

Jumanji turned to him with an air of surprise. "_You speak well, Guardian of the Spiders,"_ it said, "_and what you have said is true enough. But surely you, of all the Guardians, ought to know that there are ways of prolonging a game."_

Brigitte did not know what the spirit of the game was talking about, but, whatever it was, it was clearly not a popular idea. Khalika's eyes showed sudden alarm, and Van Pelt stirred uneasily. "Creature," he said to Jumanji, "you know well enough that I do not care for that method."

Jumanji turned to face its creator. "_Then you should not have made me what I am, Master,"_ it said.

Van Pelt's face darkened, but he did not reply.

Jumanji turned to Brigitte. "_You have requested,"_ it said, "_that the duty of finding a new Guardian of the Lion should rest with you. This means that you must go to the world Above, locate a youth who will consent to such a duty, and bring him to me, that I may take him in. Is this truly what you wish?"_

Brigitte was no longer certain whether it was or not, but there was no turning back now.

"It is," she whispered.

"_So be it,"_ said Jumanji. "_The call is even now being sent out; when the first player rolls the dice, it will be your Terror that is released."_

And with that, the gathering was concluded. The spirit of Jumanji turned and drifted away into the night, and Van Pelt shouldered his gun and escorted his daughter out of the clearing.

Slowly, one by one, the other Guardians began to disperse. Miriamne was the first to rise; taking Alexandros by the hand, she led him away tenderly from the place of evil, as a mother raccoon leads her cubs away from the fox's den. The next to leave was Claire; then Will, his serpent slithering along behind him; and so it went, until only Brigitte and Hadassah remained in the clearing.

Brigitte looked up at the Jewess, wondering why she had remained for so long, and was surprised to find Hadassah staring at her, her arms folded, with something of pity in her dark eyes. _You poor child,_ they seemed to say. _Soon you will know a thing that I would gladly have never learned._

It was in Brigitte's mind to speak to her, to ask her what this kinship was that they now shared – but before she could will her mouth to open itself, Hadassah turned and walked away, and Brigitte was left alone in the clearing.


	4. A Gift from a Comrade

For some time, Brigitte remained seated in the clearing, watching the last of Fatima's flames struggle against the heart-chilling cold of the Jumanjic night.

She herself scarcely noticed the cold. Her mind was far away, both in time and in space, from the endless jungle buried beneath the New Hampshire soil. She was remembering a day in the year 1299, three years before she had accepted Jumanji's offer of bondage, when she had been only the daughter of an Avignonian merchant and not the immortal Guardian of a flying Terror.

It had been the first day of February: the Feast of St. Bridget, Brigitte's name day. Brigitte's mother had been by birth a Danishwoman (it was from her that Brigitte got the blue eyes that seemed so incongruous against her dark Southern complexion), and she had preserved the Northern custom of celebrating a child on the feast day of that saint for whom the child was named. She had also preserved the manner of the Northern celebration, which, to a quiet and retiring maiden of Provence, seemed less like a festivity than like the scene of a battle. For perhaps an hour, it was exhilarating, but then it became overwhelming, and at last Brigitte fled to the safety of her bedchamber.

When her mother had come to look in on her, she had poured out all her weariness and frustration to her in a cascade of tears. She no longer remembered everything she had said (which, over a gap of six and a half centuries, was perhaps not surprising), but she did remember finally demanding to know why her name was so important after all – and she remembered that, at this, her mother's usually placid face grew suddenly stern.

"Do not despise your name, Birgitta," she had said, using the Latin form of Brigitte's name for emphasis. "It is the token of your baptism, the spoken image of your soul. Only the damned in Hell have no names, for they have lost themselves even as they have lost God. See that you do not become such a one."

Brigitte, awestruck by her mother's passion, could for some minutes find no words wherewith to respond, and, when she at length recovered her voice, it was only to whisper, "Neither shall I, Mother."

"Good," said her mother, and turned the talk to other matters.

* * *

Brigitte was not sure why she had retained these words of her mother's through so many mortal lifetimes, nor why they came to her now, as she was about to be sent into the Upper World to ensnare another soul. Yet come to her they did, and drew her into such profound meditations that she sat for nearly an hour on that fallen tree, heeding neither the wind that howled in the trees above nor the squeaks of François as he plucked concernedly at her sleeve.

After a time, however, her reverie waned, and she became aware of a small pressure on her bare foot. She glanced down, and saw a small, brown rat sitting in front of her, its forepaws resting on her big toe.

She turned around, and flushed to see the rat's Guardian standing behind her. "Forgive me, Sowagen," she said. "I did not hear you approach."

Sowagen smiled. "That is a skill of my people," he said. "I could see that you had much to think about, and I did not wish to disturb you."

"I thank you for that," said Brigitte. "But why did you return here at all?"

Sowagen hesitated; it was plain that the action he wished to take was not an easy one for him. "I wished, before you were sent forth," he said haltingly, "to give you a thing that I have been a long time in making for you."

He extended his hand, and Brigitte saw that there was nestled in his palm a crude crucifix made from four baobab branches; it was bound together at the crux with a cutting of liana, and to this was pinned a human figure of carved ivory, frozen in a vivid icon of death that a denizen of the twentieth century would likely have found horrible, though to the savage youth and the medieval maiden it seemed merely appropriate.

Brigitte took the cross from him and stroked its vertical bar gently with her forefinger. "It is lovely, Sowagen," she whispered. "Where did you find the ivory?"

"Khalika led me to the place where Gretl's first herd of elephants was buried," Sowagen murmured. "I had wanted, at first, to make the totem of your family, but I have never been sure whether Europeans have such things – but I knew that that symbol meant much to you."

"It is wonderful, Sowagen," said Brigitte, cradling the crucifix in her hands. She hesitated, then added, "Though if it is my… totem, then it can be yours just as easily."

Sowagen's face darkened. "Yes, so Samson has spent many moons in telling me," he said. "For my part, though, I do not think my ancestors would be pleased if I forsook their ways to chase after the white man's medicine."

"It does not deny your ancestors…" Brigitte began – but then she broke off, as a strange sensation took hold of her. It seemed as though she was being pulled toward the crystal sky – not by her arm or her hair, but in the inmost part of her being.

Sowagen saw the change in her expression, and a flicker of alarm appeared in his eye. "It is time, then?" he said. "Master Jumanji sends you forth?"

Brigitte nodded faintly, and clasped the crucifix tightly to her breast. "Pray for me, Sowagen," she whispered, unsure how much a pagan's prayer would accomplish, but feeling that some sort of prayers she would certainly need.

"May the spirits protect you, Brigitte," said Sowagen. "I would that I…"

He said more, but Brigitte did not hear it, for her ears were suddenly filled with a great howling as a sense of swift and terrible motion came over her, and the jungle about her dissolved into a welter of formless green.


	5. A Guardian above the Crystal

When her vision cleared, her breath caught in her throat. She seemed to be standing in a grand dining-hall – some five times larger than that of her old home, and so richly accoutered that she would have sworn that she was in the home of a count at the least, had she not known from Patience that there were no counts in the United States of America. And even knowing this, she was inclined to think that the United States must have changed their laws: the dark-green walls, the vaulted archways, the gleaming table with its twelve chairs, made it almost impossible to think of it as anything but the feasting-hall of a titled noble.

She reached out a hand and stroked the table reverently. It was so smooth and hard that she found it difficult to believe that it was made of wood; more likely, some cunning artificer had found a precious stone that imitated the grain of a hewn tree, and the count or duke in whose house she now stood had commissioned him to make a table out of it, that he might fête his fellow peers in proper style on the anniversary of some great battle.

The merchant's daughter in Brigitte was just beginning to calculate how much such a table would cost in écus when she heard a sudden, terrified scream coming from an adjacent room. She whirled about, thinking that the Masters had released a second terror, and a scene of utter horror met her eyes.

Jumanji was sitting open on a table in a neighboring room, and a youth and a maiden were kneeling on either side of it. This in itself would have been a disturbing image (Brigitte remembered Sowagen's stories of the Micmac scouts who had played the game when he was fetched, and who had worshipped Jumanji as a chthonic deity), but what was happening to the youth was more unnerving still.

For the wretched youth was staring down at his hands, and screaming in terror as first his fingers, then his wrists, were transformed into smoke and began to drift away from his body As Brigitte watched, immobilized by horror, the rest of the youth's body was likewise dissolved, and he was drawn, still screaming, into the green crystal that lay at the center of Jumanji's board, and within which lay the endless jungle in which Brigitte herself had been imprisoned for six hundred years.

His screams had scarcely ceased to echo through the manor when they were replaced by another, higher-pitched cry. Brigitte's bats had flown out of a nearby fireplace, and were swarming about the maiden with all the innocent malevolence that was part of the nature of a Terror of Jumanji.

Brigitte tried to call them off of her, but it was no use. Once a Terror had been released into the upper world, it was no longer under the control of its Guardian; the maiden of Avignon could only watch helplessly as her once-gentle charges drove the hysterical young woman out the door of the château and into the stillness of the New Hampshire night.

* * *

Brigitte sank to her knees, and clutched limply at the leg of a chair. Tears leaked from her eyes and splattered on the burnished wooden floor. Whether those tears were due to fear, to pity for the youth, or to simple self-pity at finding that, in returning to the upper world, she had not left the horrors of the jungle behind, she could not have said, but she could no more have stopped them than she could have cradled one of Gretl's elephants in her arms. Indeed, she might well have remained kneeling by that dining-table and weeping until the sun rose the next morning, had she not suddenly heard the front door open again and footsteps echo on the floor.

At first, she thought that the maiden had eluded her bats and returned to finish the game. The next moment, however, she realized how foolish that was. The footsteps in the hall were not those of a young maiden, least of all one who had just been terrified by a cloud of bats; it was a firmer, more confident tread that now greeted her ears. Indeed, unless she was much mistaken, it was the tread of a successful and prosperous merchant: just so had her father sounded when he had entered her family house on the Rhône, all those centuries before.

She gathered up her skirts and attempted to rise, thinking to hide herself from the man's gaze – for, though she was the daughter of a respectable family, six hundred years in the deepest, darkest jungle had given her the figure and appearance of a starveling beggar maiden, and she knew from firsthand experience that nothing so displeases a respectable householder as to find a strange beggar dwelling in his house without his consent. Her legs, however, were still too weak to support her (both from fear and from the loss of her tears), and she collapsed onto the floor again just as the merchant passed by the dining hall.

He turned, and stared at her in bewilderment not unmixed with hostility. "_Who are you?_" he said.

Brigitte could only stare helplessly. Even in her Avignonian childhood, she had never spoken a word of English, and her centuries in the jungle had caused her almost to forget that there were languages other than the sinister, cacophonous speech that Jumanji granted to its slaves.

"_Well?_" said the man.

"Forgive me, sir," said Brigitte, groping frantically for what words of human speech she could remember, and hoping that Lingua Franca was still spoken Above. "I have come from a distant place, and do not know how to speak to you."

The man frowned, and began speaking in what seemed to Brigitte an incomprehensible mutilation of the Genoese dialect. (It was, in fact, very good Italian by twentieth-century standards, but the linguistic standards of one era are not necessarily those of another.) When she failed to respond, he switched over to an equally barbarous parody of Parisian; when that likewise failed to evoke a response in her, he curled his lip in apparent disdain and turned and strode away, calling out something that sounded vaguely like "_Alain!... Alain!_" as he did so.

No sooner had he left the room than a low, rhythmic pounding began to beat in Brigitte's ears. To an innocent of the twentieth century, it might well have sounded like the beat of African drums, familiar from a hundred adventure films; to Brigitte, however, it had a far more sinister signification. It was the sound she heard, through the ears of her bats, pulsing continually beneath the noises of the Jumanjic jungle; it was the heartbeat of the unclean spirit that imbued the game of Jumanji with its unnatural life.

She rose her head in trepidation, and saw the green mist that marked the presence of the jungle spirit rising from the crystal in the game-board and drifting toward her. It wafted through the archway that connected the two rooms, wound itself around the dining-hall until its appalling greenness obscured everything else from Brigitte's vision, and then descended to Brigitte's eye level, its gleaming red eyes barely a yard from her terrified blue ones.

_"Dear me, Guardian of the Bats,"_ it said, in an amused tone that was more terrible than any mortal's anger, _"you seem to have rather complicated matters. Unless I am much mistaken, the master of this house believes that his son has let a young madwoman into his house, and has gone to have a word with him. In which case he will likely learn somewhat ahead of schedule that his son no longer dwells in the sunlit realms."_

"Why did you take him?" Brigitte whispered. "He cannot be made a Guardian against his will; what does it profit you to imprison him in the jungle?"

_"It prolongs the game,"_ said Jumanji. _"Had the boy and his companion been permitted to play by themselves, the game would have ended before tomorrow's sunset – which, as the Guardian of the Spiders most astutely observed, will not likely give you enough time to find a suitable Guardian of the Lion. As things now stand, however, the girl will not soon return to make her second move, and you will have as much time to perform your task as you may desire."_

Brigitte stared in horrified awe at the spirit, as the words that it had exchanged with Khalika and Van Pelt returned to her memory. "You have done this before," she whispered. "When Khalika was taken. Is it not so?"

Instead of answering, Jumanji turned its gaze to the stairway, which the merchant was now descending in a manner that bespoke great distress. _"You would do well to remain still for a moment, Guardian of the Bats,"_ he said. _"It will be difficult to erase the knowledge of you from this gentleman's mind if he sees you moving about in his dining-hall."_

Though Brigitte did not see the necessity of erasing her from the merchant's mind, she obediently froze in her place as the power of Jumanji throbbed about her. This power, though fearsome, was unquestionably efficacious; so far as Brigitte could make out through the mist, the merchant did not even turn to look at her as he strode through the hallway and out of the house once again.

Jumanji nodded with satisfaction, and returned its gaze to Brigitte. _"Once you are strong enough to rise,"_ it said, _"conceal my corporeal vessel somewhere where the residents of this house will not find it; there must be many such places in so vast a dwelling. When you have done this, you are free to leave the house and go wherever in the surrounding village you please – but remember,"_ it added, with a sudden cold blaze of its eyes that caused Brigitte's heart to flutter, _"that you are not to leave the village, nor to approach anyone save the candidate for Guardianship. If yo__u do, your punishment when you return to the jungle will be more grievous than you can possibly imagine."_

Before Brigitte could reply, there was a soft sucking sound, and the green mist that surrounded her began to flow back into the crystal. Within the space of a few seconds, the body of the game-spirit had completely vanished; the drumbeat of its heart had given way to silence; and Brigitte was alone in the dining-hall.


	6. A Glimpse into the Soul

Brigitte tiptoed up the stairs of the mansion, the board of Jumanji slung under her arm. Her sense of being in a palace deepened with every step she took: no man who was not a king's favorite could possibly have a house that went this high.

She felt a slight pang of guilt at the thought when she reflected on what she was doing. Bad enough that she was leaving Jumanji in another's house at all, but to afflict the dwelling of a great lord with its presence seemed to her _petite-bourgeoise_ soul a sacrilege compounded. But she had no alternative – save that of taking the game with her, and she would do anything before she did that.

When she reached the attic (with François, who alone of her bats seemed to have retained some connection to her as his Guardian, fluttering behind her), she searched for a while until she found a pile of boxes about the same size and shape as the Jumanji board, which no-one seemed to have disturbed in some time. She removed four or five boxes from this pile and placed Jumanji on top of the stack that remained, then replaced the boxes on top of it. The result was most satisfactory: unless someone knew what to look for, he would never notice the new addition to the pile without kneeling down and sorting through it.

Having accomplished this, she rose and looked about for François, only to find him perched comfortably in the attic roof, his wings wrapped around him as he dangled from one of the rafters. She smiled softly; he, at least, had had no trouble readapting to life Above. She only hoped she would find it so easy.

She gathered up her skirts and tiptoed from the attic.

* * *

As she stepped hesitantly out the front door of the Parrish house, she was rather surprised by how still the street was outside. Brantford, though far from the sleepiest of New England hamlets in those days, was still very much a New Hampshire small town with only one major business to its name; subconsciously, Brigitte had expected something more like the Avignon of her youth. She had expected to see tradesmen riding home after closing up their stalls, friars walking past telling their beads, evening revelers making themselves conspicuous outside the local wine-shops – in short, bustle and activity, albeit a subdued, pre-industrial variety. The soporific stillness of the Brantford streets wrong-footed her almost as deeply as its opposite, the chaotic tumult of New York City or Chicago, would have done.

To be fair, it would perhaps not have unsettled her so deeply had it not been for the automobiles that occasionally swept past as she was descending the steps of the house; the contrast between that mysterious swiftness on the street and the lack of activity off of it made the 20th century seem all the more uncanny to its medieval visitor. Nonetheless, the stillness was the essential problem; having known her only untroubled happiness as a child in the Babylon of the West, she could not help equating crowds of human beings with security, sunlight, and health.

Then, as she stood on the sidewalk, looking around helplessly for some indication of what to do next, the door of the house to her immediate left opened. This was the home of the Parrishes' next-door neighbors, the Nelsons; their fifteen-year-old daughter, Amy, had observed Brigitte's bewilderment through the window, and had decided to offer her help. "_Hey, are you lost?_" she called to Brigitte.

Brigitte, though not understanding the words, knew a friendly voice when she heard one, and turned gratefully in the direction of the sound. Then, as she caught sight of Amy, her eyes widened with horror, and she turned and ran from the well-meaning girl as though from all the Terrors of Jumanji at once.

Amy stared after her in puzzlement, trying to make sense of what she had seen. A preadolescent girl in medieval costume, who doesn't seem to have ever seen a road before and runs away when you try to talk to her. What could be the reason for that?

In a different decade, the question might well have been insoluble. This, however, was 1969, and so an answer lay ready to Amy's hand. "Geez," she muttered, shaking her head. "These hippies are weird people."

* * *

When Brigitte stopped for breath, she had run halfway across town, to the far end of Monroe Street. Six hundred years in the untamed wild had given her great powers of endurance, and fear had given her feet wings.

It was not the young woman that had inspired her fear; it was what she had seen when she had looked at her. She had wondered, when Jumanji had spoken to her in the manor's dining-hall, how she was supposed to find a suitable Guardian if she wasn't permitted to speak to anyone beforehand; now she knew. When she had looked where the girl stood, she had seen, not the girl herself (or, if she had, it had been very dimly), but a cold, hideous diagram of all her weaknesses: her fears, her petty vanities, her excesses of sentiment – all the things that might, if properly played upon, lead her to surrender her freedom to a demonic board game.

Brigitte shuddered, and peeked out from behind the tree that she was resting against. A family of three had just parked by the side of the road and was getting out of their car; she could see the mother and father quite clearly, but the nine-year-old boy was obscured by another obscene psychograph of the same sort.

Brigitte turned her face away quickly, and tears welled in her eyes as she cursed her folly. How could she have thought that returning Above would bring her relief from the evil of the jungle? By agreeing to fetch a new Guardian, she had bound herself all the more deeply to that evil. Before, she had been only its dupe; now, she was its willing servant. (_As Hadassah is,_ she thought bitterly. _That was the kinship she saw with me._)

She rubbed her eyes fiercely, hoping irrationally that she might thereby wipe away the bewitchment that Jumanji had placed on her vision. It was fruitless, of course: the taint of dark magic is not removed so easily. Jumanji required a youth or a child to guard its lion; Brigitte had promised to bring it one; until she did so, she would be unable to look at a youth or a child without seeing a potential Guardian of the Lion. It was unavoidable – even, in a macabre way, just.

She wondered why she had seen no cloud of weaknesses about the girl whom her bats had frightened. The answer, though, was obvious immediately. The girl was a Player, and no Player could be a Guardian. The Players had a different role in the plan of the game: it was theirs to watch the world around them devolve into chaos as the Terrors were unleashed, to know that they were the cause, and yet to be unable to make things right save by unleashing further Terrors. The passive side of the game, the side of waiting and maintaining over the centuries – that was reserved for others, for those who had never heard the drums or held the dice, but who simply happened to be in the wrong place and the wrong mood at the wrong time. Such had Brigitte been, when the Duke and his gambling partners had played the game in 1302; such had Sowagen been, and Miriamne, and Patience, and all the other Guardians.

And at that moment, somewhere in Brantford, there was an unfortunate youth who was in the same predicament, and would soon find him- or herself likewise bound to serve Jumanji for a score or more of mortal lifetimes – and all through the voluntary agency of Brigitte of Avignon.

Then, just as this dismal reflection passed through Brigitte's mind, the clock on the nearby Episcopal church struck the half-hour.

Brigitte looked up, startled, and for the first time noticed the white steeple rising over the lines of houses and small shops. A sudden thrill of gladness rose in her bosom; to her, in her present state of mind, the sound of church bells tolling was the most heartening thing she could have heard. It spoke of hope; it promised protection; it reminded her that there were powers greater and more kindly than the one on whose errand she had come. _Adeas cum fiducia ad thronum gratiæ_, it said to her, _ut misericordiam consequaris, et gratiam invenias in auxilio opportuno_.

She did not know that the chime, in itself, indicated nothing more than a division of the day, nor would she have cared if she had known. It might, indeed, have momentarily sobered her to learn that the church that seemed to her such a vessel of mercy was the property of the heretical faith that Will and Patience professed, but it would not have likely deterred her. God was God, after all, and Christ was Christ, and any means to Him, however imperfect, was as water in the desert to her troubled and afflicted soul.

She pressed Sowagen's ivory crucifix to her chest, and ran towards the church as fast as her legs could carry her.


End file.
